The present invention generally relates to a copying apparatus and more particularly, to a copying control arrangement to be applied, for example, to a transfer type copying cycle apparatus in a continuous copying, which is intended to achieve favorable quality in all copies, and this is accomplished by processing a first copied sheet from the continuous copying cycle for the purpose of inspection, so as not to produce faulty copied items (referred to as copied sheets hereinbelow) when such continuous copying mode has been selected.
At present, when a large number of copies are to be taken from an original or original document to be copied, for example, in an electrophotographic copying apparatus (referred to merely as copying apparatus hereinbelow) currently available, it is so arranged that the predetermined number of copies to be taken is preset in advance for obtaining the required number of copied sheets through a continuous copying mode (referred to as "multi-mode" hereinbelow).
However, in the known copying apparatus as described above, if the multi-mode copying is directly effected, it may result in an excessive waste of time or copying materials. In other words, in the above practice, there may be cases where all the copied sheets can not always be obtained with the quality desired, depending on the set position or image density of the original document to be copied, condition of the copying apparatus, and particularly, on the state of system related to toner, etc. Such inconvenience or waste as described above is attributable to the fact that, for judging the quality of copied images, there is no other way at present than to evaluate the image quality of the copied sheets through visual examination after the copying cycle.
Such being the case, it may be a normal procedure adopted by machine operators, to take only one copy initially by use of a mode for copying only one sheet (referred to as "single mode" hereinbelow) even when a large number of copies are to be obtained, and to change over to the multi-mode, if the image quality of such initial one sheet is found to be satisfactory.
However, the method as described above still has some drawbacks as follows. More specifically, the procedure forces an operator to carry out two stages of operations, i.e. the single mode operation and subsequent multi-mode operation, and when the practice is combined with a sorter (or collator), it is extremely inconvenient, since two sheets for the same copy are to be fed into a first bin of the sorter.
In connection with the above, Japanese Laid Open Patent Application Tokkaisho No. 55-164841 proposed to particularly eliminate the latter inconvenience, this is accomplished by an arrangement in which the first copied sheet is necessarily discharged onto the side of a tray, even when the sorter is selected.
The known arrangement as described above has disadvantages in that, since even a copied sheet of good quality is undesirably discharged onto the tray at all times, there is an inconvenience for collation, while, owing to the fact that standing-by for the predetermined period of time is required even when correction of a copied image is unnecessary in the multi-mode copying, loss of the time is necessarily involved, thus resulting in a double drawback. U.S. Pat. No. 3,936,180 is cited of general interest to disclose the capacity of providing a sample page during a normal operating cycle.